RE:RE:RE:RE:TO Matt, my thoughts!SOI has experienced miners on their board and they know how to operate in the remote area of Cheechoo. They are already bringing out ore and removing gold from it. To mine is just a matter of scaling up what they do now. They can easily adjust to mining about 100 tonnes per day, moving the ore, crushing it and settling the gold. They can do that with hardware they can buy or rent with a modest capital outflow and the costs of the equipment and labour can be recovered by sellling the gold.
The only real barrier to that is environmental approval, approval from the neighbours and permission to mine from PQ. Since Eleonore is close by and in operation all of those approvals should be easily obtained. SOI know how to do this and whatever they don't know they can get by hiring the right people or consultants. Partnership with NGC would likely make this a sure thing. I don't know why that hasn't happened already but it's not necessary if SOI starts mining in a small way within their means. They can recover their costs promptly, acquire capital and pay dividends and/or pay for future operations from the proceeds. Does anyone think that a mine that was probably feasible at $1200 USD/ounce is no feasible at $1800 USD/ounce? That's just silly.